One of the issues facing the development of manned, long duration space missions is how to manage liquids/gases for life support. Gases such as O2, CO2, CH4 etc are inputs and by-products of life support systems, for non-regenerative (open-loop) systems. Stores should be enough to sustain any short duration crew visit and until regenerating (closed loop) systems can be installed.

Over the last few years schemes based on minimal kinetic models for the Boltzmann equation are becoming increasingly popular as a reliable alternative over conventional Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) techniques. Due to the flexibility afforded by its close connection to the kinetic theory recent research has led to major improvements, including consistent models for aerothermodynamics and highly compressible flow in low gravity operating conditions.

New L2 missions like Euclid and Plato will require high data rate reception in K-Band downlink (26 GHz). A new X/K-Band coaxial feed system was developed in a previous TRP activity and it will be deployed in the next years in DSA2 (Cebreros, Spain) and DSA3 (Malargue, Argentina). This feed system architecture will be considered the starting point for the re-design of a new feed system that will allow simultaneous uplink (22 GHz) and downlink (26 GHz).It is intended to trade-off at least two alternative feed system architectures and to perform the detailed design of the selected one.

Glass cells are typically used in Frequency Standard, both as reference cell, in the lamps for atomic pumping and as dissociator bulbs.When used in a lamp (RAFS or Mercury ion trap), the cell must be sufficiently resilient for avoiding limitations in the lifetime due to diffusion of material (i.e. Rubidium or Mercury) inside the bulb walls, given the combination of dissociation mechanisms and high temperatures.

Currently the size limit for primary mirrors of large telescopes is - due to the available Ariane-5 fairing - typically at 3.5m (Herschel). Future science (and most likely also Earth observation missions) will call for larger telescope sizes due to more demanding requirements on the light collecting efficiency and angular resolution.

The aim of this study was to explore and consolidate the possible sources of methane (CH₄) biases in retrievals from thermal infrared (TIR) sensors, to establish necessary actions and perform the related work for mitigating biases. The study distinguisged three types of error sources: spectroscopic knowledge and input data to radiative transfer models (RTM), forward model errors, and instrument biases.

For achieving this goal, the study addresses three main objectives, corresponding to three identified tasks: